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As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

Desmond Tutu

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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Humans
Perpetrate
Horrendous
Atrocities
Extraordinary
Capacity
Beings
Evil
Human

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity.
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Never let anyone make you feel inferior for being who you are. When you live the life you were meant to live, in freedom and dignity
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In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute - a white skin.
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If we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do belong together, that our destinies are bound up in one another's, that we can be free only together, that we can be human only together, then a glorious world would come into being where all of us lived harmoniously together as members of one family, the human family.
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Freedom is indivisible. Whites can't enjoy their separate freedoms. They spend too much time and resources defending those freedoms instead of enjoying them.
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We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.
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If we have loved well while we were alive, there is life after death here-our love will go on for generations.
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The sad problem is that we see ourselves as being quite terribly small. Instead of spending my time being envious, I need to celebrate your and my different gifts, even if mine are perhaps less spectacular than yours.
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We must stop climate change. And we can, if we use the tactics that worked in South Africa against the worst carbon emitters.
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Making the truth public is a form of justice. This is a moral universe and you've got to take account of the fact that truth and lies and goodness and evil are things that matter.
Desmond Tutu
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Our lives are a response to a love that we already have received.
Desmond Tutu
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Serve others. The failing recipe for happiness and success is to want the good of others. happiness is when I see others happy. Happiness is a shared thing. I feel very diminished happiness if it is something I enjoy myself.
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Forgiveness and reconciliation are not just ethereal, spiritual, other-worldly activities. They have to do with the real world. They are realpolitik, because in a very real sense, without forgiveness, there is no future.
Desmond Tutu
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People are able to justify immense cruelty and say that it is something that is sanctioned by their faith.
Desmond Tutu
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We will only truly be free when those in bondage are finally free
Desmond Tutu
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It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.
Desmond Tutu
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We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil.
Desmond Tutu
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If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.
Desmond Tutu
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Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.
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God could have created us to be automatons who were always choosing the right side, making the right decision. It is an incredible thing, God said I want persons who therefore have freedom.
Desmond Tutu